City Ford Rockdale - It Ain't Cool!
I had to shorten the title from "City Ford Rockdale - No Aircon switch, it Ain't Cool!" In fact, if anything, someone's boiling.
On 31 October 2006, a friend of mine took his vehicle into City Ford Rockdale, and advised the service department representative that the air conditioner wasn't working. It was quite obvious that the fault lay with the actual switch on the dashboard, a fact that was confirmed by the service representative at the end of the day.
Here's the ridiculous bit. My friend was told that the spares section didn't have a new switch, that there wasn't a single new switch available in NSW, and that they would have to order one in from Melbourne. How is it possible that the dashboard switch for a Ford Focus Sedan is not readily available?
Guess what? My friend has now been waiting for a call from City Ford Rockdale for two months, while having to endure the discomfort of Sydney summer driving without the air condioner.
This is not the first issue my friend has had with City Ford Rockdale, and I have been witness to some of them.
If you read the City Ford Rockdale web page, you should notice the sales pitch - "fresh, clean, customer focused". The website also claims that their "service department is second to none". What!
The Dealer Principal, Dale Chambeyron, obviously has a problem on his hands if 'customer focused' means not getting a part for someone's car, or absolutely forgetting about a customer for two months.
Someone has stuffed up, and they've stuffed up badly!
Update (2 January 2007) My friend called City Ford Rockdale today and spoke with the Service Manager, who apologised for what had happened. Guess what? The dashboard switch for the air conditioner had still not been ordered. The Service Manager advised that the part would arrive this Thursday, and that City Ford would provide the service labor free-of-charge. Grrrr! Somehow, I don't believe that this makes up for two months worth of inconvenience.
News for 2007
Tracy Bowden It's been another full year - I was reminded of this by an ABC round-up in this evening's "The 7.30 Report". This also reminded me of how careful one should be not to rely on one news source. As we all do, journalists very often make mistakes, however, factual errors should be picked up before going to air. In a terrible gaf, correspondent Tracy Bowden referred to Donald Rumsfeld as the USA's Secretary of State. Someone within the team (even the recording engineer) should have been able to tell Tracy that Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense.
What lies ahead for 2007? Let's hope that the news is brighter, and more accurate.
Retrieving Old Outlook Express files when IMPORT doesn't Work
The procedure below is used for retrieving email files into Outlook Express when the IMPORT command can't locate the DBX file. Be very careful to follow the steps exactly as described below, and do not deviate, or else it will not work.
Ensure Outlook Express is not running. If it is, exit the programme.
Using Windows Explorer, copy a renamed .DBX file from another location into the folder where your usual Outlook Express .DBX files are located. This would usually be C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{8E2DE67F-DAA0-4FB3-AAD1-F0B4F7490260}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\. For example, if you had an old .DBX file that was called INBOX.DBX, make sure that you rename it to something like INBOX_OLD before you copy it into the 'USER' folder, otherwise you will wipe over the emails in the current Inbox. Note: USER is the name that you usually logon to Windows with.
Only after you have copied the renamed .DBX file, delete the file named FOLDERS.DBX. Don't worry about doing this, because it will rebuild itself when Outlook Express starts again.
Now, move the focus away from the 'USER' folder. In other words, move up on level or click onto another folder (directory), so that Windows Explorer is not showing the files in the 'USER' folder.
Start Outlook Express. You should now see INBOX_OLD listed as one of you local folders.
Please email me if you find any faults with the information above.
YATES Confidor 'Money-Grab'
Is it a YATES money-grab or is Yates a money-GRUB?
Anyone who has used or sold Yates' Confidor Hose-on Lawn Insecticide for lawn grubs, may not be aware of a serious problem with the product.
The applicator that releases the chemical is severely faulty. Due to this, the mixture either does not syphon out, or it syphons at the wrong ratio. Either way, you've wasted your money.
I discovered this after more than 4 bottles of this product was 'wasted' over the last year. On a few of these occasions, I watered my lawn for literally hours without the level of the container changing at all.
Yates admitted to me that the cause of the fault was in the old mold. They were rushing to get a new one made.
In the meantime, thousands of Confidor Hose-on bottles were still on shelves all around the country.
NO SIGN OF A PRODUCT RECALL and NO SIGN OF ADVISING THE RETAILERS.
I have spoken with a number of nursery managers and product buyers, and none of them have ever been made aware of the problem.
It would appear that Yates has been happy to take the money for the stock, but since being aware of the problem they have not recalled the product or made any public announcement.
How professionally ethical is this!
Confidor Hose-on should empty out quite quickly (probably around 6 minutes), which means you have to work relatively fast. If you find you are spending significantly longer, the product is faulty.
Officeworks - Where's the Works?
Officeworks uses the slogan "the works" in its logo. Where's the works? There's no works. It doesn't works.
Yesterday afternoon, I visited the Carlton store for colour inkjet overhead transparencies. There was not a single packet available.
A few months back, Officeworks in Carlton ran out of A4 Manilla Folders. This is, of course, utterly ridiculous!
Firstly, point of sale systems, even for small retailers, include fully integrated accounting and inventory management. There's nothing new about this.
Such a system records a sale, and automatically notifies the company buyer when a stock item falls below the minimum allowed amount.
There is absolutely no valid reason why a large office stationer such as Officeworks should run out of stock items. The problem does not appear to be limited to the Carlton store. A manager at another branch told me that her store also had no colour OHTs. She believes this has been the case for a number of months.
What BS! There are a number of overhead transparency brands available in Australia: Australian Inkjet Film, Nobo, 3M, Epson, HP, Apollo, Dataline, Celcast and more.
For Officeworks not to have any is pathetic. What are these goons up to?
I invite Officeworks to take the advantage of the right of reply, but any excuse would be feeble.
Note: Officeworks have steadily been replacing some papers with their own brand. I don't know where they source their gloss inkjet paper, but I learnt the hard way to avoid the Officeworks brand. It's junk. I chose to give it a go on a small print job of 40 report covers some time back. The prints had to be suspended from a 'washing line' for two days to dry properly - something that would never happen with the TDK or Kodak brands.
